I've never cleaned a bird before. Cutting off the head and feet and wings. Beautiful plumage. Prying the beak open to see its perfect mouth. The feathers peel off like a pelt. Coiled black entrails flop out and stink. The heart solid and big, the fresh liver. The chunky flesh of the breast.

Tomorrow I'm taking those snares up.

The ruffled whirr as the birds ascend and disperse. In Peterson's guidebook: at a distance the grouse's m.u.f.fled thumping is so hollow that sometimes it hardly registers as an exterior sound, but seems rather to be a disturbing series of vibrations within the ear itself.

The strongest socket is in the wing. The legs are like the front legs of a rabbit, no ball joint. The eye sunken but brown.

Josh says, With the cold, the meat should be healthy. He says Franky Langer was once lost in the woods and had to eat his dog. He was gone four days, Josh says. I mean, four days. He couldnt last longer than that before eating his dog?

18 I miss Lydia. When youre used to holding someone, a physical habit, you miss it. Is it habit to miss a voice too, to miss a response to your thought? I do no writing. There is nothing in Heart's Desire to fill the absence of Lydia. I stare at the road and wait for the school bus. Josh says, in an accusing tone, You wasnt up by lunchtime.

How do you know? You were in school.

My parents said at noontime there was no smoke coming out of your chimley.

Toby: What happened to Maisie's fridge?

I broke it trying to thaw the freezer.

Josh: You laid a hammer to it.

Yes, I went at it with a hammer.

Trying to break out chunks of ice.

Yes.

They both shake their heads.

Josh: Dad got a old fridge in the bas.e.m.e.nt.

Well, I'd love to have it.

Josh: I'll see what I can do.

They take the axe and go out to the shed to cleave up some junks of wood.

19 Josh's father, Cyril Harnum, stands up on the grey flatbed truck, the garbage truck. With two men helping. The flatbed has a fridge roped to it.

The young driver, with a screwdriver, pops out the hinge bolts on the side door.

I can smell coffee, the other man says. You want her plugged in or thaw her out?

I should have kept the plug out of her last night, Cyril Harnum says.

I have paid fifty dollars for this fridge. The fat, heavy enamelled door that opens onto a salmon pink interior with two chrome shelves that swivel out. There is a pair of lightbulbs sunk into the bottom so the shine strikes up on your food, floorlights on a stage. It makes the food seem solid, planted, stars of the grocery world. The corners of the milk carton lit in a gold aureole, the spout silhouetted. I e-mail Alex about it and she responds that it was built in a time when kitchen appliances were treated as art.

All night I leave my work to go open the fridge door and admire the rich pink interior.

Cyril Harnum: Come over to supper tomorrow.

20 I call Lydia and beg her to come out. She says, I thought you wanted time on your own? I have no response. I miss watching her do things. She doesnt do things the way I do them. She makes a lot of ice cubes. I'm a man who forgets to make ice cubes. She makes sure there's air in her bag of lettuce. She sprinkles talc.u.m powder in her hair if it's greasy.

Josh comes by on his bike with no handlebars.You like fish? He is steering with a set of vice grips clamped to the front fork.

I eat nine pieces of fish with slices of hot homemade bread. The fish is served from the stove. On the table are jars of tomato and rippled pickle slices. I have a mug of boiled water in which I can put a tea bag or a spoonful of instant coffee. There's a can of evaporated milk.

Josh's mom, Doreen, is rolling cigarettes at the table. There's patch in the varnish at the end of the table faded from cups of tea. I've told them my decision to lift my slips and Josh thinks it's foolish but his dad can see how it's cruel.

Cyril: There used to be no grouse out here. Now the woods is thick with em. Theyre easier to pick than turre. With turre you got to dip em in boiling water first.

There is a big hook in the ceiling that I ask about. Doreen laughs. Cyril has a sore back, she says, from working in the woods. It's all right in the summer, it's in the winter it acts up. So he put a screw in the ceiling beam with a rope through tied to his waist. He hoists himself off the floor with the rope. He won't go see a doctor.

Doreen hands me a fresh loaf as I leave. The snow just wisping over the ground. The loaf is warm in my hand.

21 I tie on my snowshoes and venture into the woods. Tinker wades in a few feet, then sits down. I do love solitude. I am a simple man when it comes to being satisfied by the natural world. The sun poking through in patches, lighting up a knoll here, a dip there. Tinker begins to bawl when he's had enough. I can still see the roof of the house.

A man at the store says, I'll give you twenty dollars for that dog.

You want my dog?

Sure, he looks like he got one more winter in him. He's full of bird dog.

Tinker wags and smells the man's hand.

He's not my dog, I say. I dont want to explain the absence of Lydia, so I leave it at that.

I've got the woodstove vent opened wide, but still I'm cold. Didnt write at all today. I forced myself to read fifty pages of Proust. Maisie and Oliver have great books. But there's no hot water. My hair is greasy. I sweep the floor and visit the Heart's Content grocery. Lydia comes tomorrow. I will hear her catalytic converter.

22 When I opened the door we were shy. We were relieved that Tinker b.u.mbo was a diversion, but we were awkward together. Twelve days apart and all that we've formed together has burned off, grease on a stove element. We are two individuals again. We do not act in concert. We are not convinced by the prospect of living as a couple. We were brought together by Maisie, and we still feel unnatural. It wasnt our idea to be together but someone else's, and both of us resent that intrusion into domestic affairs. Lydia circles me like an animal, inspecting. And I feel judged.

But I've been told that I have a critical eye. Some people mistake my gaze for judgement. When all I'm doing is looking into your eye. I have an open eye, I admit. This can unnerve some people. Make them uneasy. But it's their insecurity that is exposed. However, I admire the skill Max has for making a person feel comfortable. Max lives in his skin, completely, whereas I float within my body. Not quite filling my frame.

And right now, with Lydia in the kitchen, adding to the fridge with some city groceries, I'm dreading having to make conversation. We've been together eighteen months, and still I have this black, boggy fear creeping into my joints.

Nice fridge, she says.

She has a blemished finery about her. Her good looks only heightened by the small scars incurred from reckless behaviour, when she has. .h.i.t the corner of a kitchen cabinet or smacked into a cement wall.

23 Josh and Toby are impressed with Lydia. That she's been on television and she owns Tinker. She makes them cookies. I explain our system to Lydia. I unfold the laptop and they begin. There's Rosy Langer with four youngsters and they havent got the same father, and Fail Burden they got a song made up about him about a cigarette or a power saw, and France Clarke lives in a small house, not bad but not very big. About the same size as this one.

They look around.

Same size. France he's after losing a nice bit of weight. He has a car brought up solid on a rock and he got out and the car rised up about three foot. Next is Leonard, he wears pork chop grease to keep his hair down and puts his cap on squish. Then there's Pat Whelan, who got a gla.s.s eye.

Lydia: How did he lose his eye?

Toby: I thought it was a hook at the wharf.

Josh: No, he was foolin around and got stuck in the eye with a p.r.o.ng.

Sure, that's what I said.

John Harris is up to the store every day. He uses his trike for a car. Next is Killer Sean; he's married. His wedding was only half an hour long cause they havent got any money.

And that's it for half the harbour.

With the presence of Lydia they cut it short. Josh says, So are you two married or what?

Lydia: No, we're not married.

Me: We're entertaining the prospect.

You guys should get married and come out and live here. Lydia: We'll think about it.

24 I'm telling Lydia about the novel, how Max Wareham will be the model for Rockwell Kent, how I'm stuffing the novel with facts from the present, stuffing garlic and sage into a leg of lamb, when her body suddenly tenses, her leg lifts off the couch. She wants to interrupt. But rests again. As if her entire body is full of the words she wants to say, have coursed through her and stalled before sputtering out.

Me: What is it.

Lydia: Nothing. It's unrelated.

Me: You may as well say it.

She releases her censor. She says, Do you call Max a friend of yours?

Why.

He was talking about you. He had questions, but the questions were leading.

What did he ask?

He asked what I thought of you. If I thought you were aloof.

And you said.

That I loved you, and yes, you are aloof.

And he said.

That youre obviously attracted to me. He said that I'm too good for you.

He's said that about all my girlfriends.

He wanted to take on Wilf in the bas.e.m.e.nt. He wanted to wrestle. He wanted to wrestle naked.

Was serene Daphne Yarn there for that?

They left together.

You got them together?

I introduced them.

Max has been single a long time.

It was the kind of party where everyone was. .h.i.tting off everyone else.

I won't even ask.

Wouldnt it be fun to have a party like that? Everyone naked except for trenchcoats.

Me: I think it would be silly.

You think it would.

I think it's funny to think about, but not to go ahead with. It's fun to laugh, dont you think?

Yes, it's fun to laugh.

25 We load up the cars. I pull the plug on the fridge, prop the freezer door open with a piece of cardboard. I fill the toilet with antifreeze. I stoke up the woodstove one last time, then lock the front door. The boys are in school. I look back to see a puff of pure blue smoke. I follow Lydia as we drive back to town. We pa.s.s a harbour seal lying in the snow by the side of the road. His skin is so full of meat, like a forced sausage. I can see the instinct behind clubbing and sculping.

Lydia says her father thinks we're getting married. She had asked him what he thought of me. And then she had to tell him that we're still thinking about it.

26 Back home on Long's Hill. Helmut Rehm is studying the plans of the racer, Sailsoft. He says he will lose about fifteen pounds on the final leg of the race. They will begin in Boston in June and sail to a small port near Sao Paulo. The next leg has them cross to Namibia. This is the toughest section. Some racers like to veer to an extreme southern lat.i.tude, where higher winds exist and therefore greater sailing speed. But there's the danger of shoals, hurricanes, ice, and brutally cold temperatures. They'll lay up in Africa for a month and begin again around the cape to Bombay. Head southeast to Sydney and north again to Hawaii and over to San Francisco. Thread the needle at Panama and then boot it to Boston. A five-month race. Their boat is sponsored by a software company.

Helmut says he can sit in our living room all day and be entertained by the fronts combining to make weather. He has never seen weather like it.

27 Lydia's cousin is getting married to a man who studies geology. He has shown me a series of maps that shave plates of rock off the island, as though it were an anatomy lesson, revealing pockets of magma and oil and natural gas, seams of coal. A network of veins stripped away to expose muscle groups, then these lifted to display skeletal structure. You understand, from the rock, that the island is chunks of three continents fused together.

In the church, an aunt two pews ahead turns around and mouths to me, Congratulations. I frown. She mouths it again, five distinct syllables.

Lydia: That we're getting married.

Lydia leans over the pew to tell her the difference.

At the reception Lydia spills punch over her blue tulle dress. She says, I guess I'll have to walk around all night like this: one hand on her belly, laughing. The stain between her hand and her laugh. She kisses the groom on the shoulders. She kisses her cousin on the eyelids. The aunt who whispered to me says to Lydia, I can see your bra strap.

Lydia lifts a shoulder, bends an elbow, and slips off her bra. She pulls the bra from her dress like a rabbit. She stuffs it in my jacket pocket.

On the way home with her parents, Lydia in back with her mother, her father dropping me off. We kiss across the seats as he pulls the handbrake against the steep hill. Her parents are disappointed. Mr Murphy had said to me, I hear there's been a proposal. And I had to say to him, We're still negotiating. I hand back her bra, cupped in my fist. The crisp rustle of that blue tulle dress.

I've known her now for eighteen months, but even this one night informs me. I can love her way. But I can't love her if she doesnt love me.

28 Max introduces me to Daphne Yarn. I was expecting someone quiet, but she has a story. She's taller than Max, but then Max is short. I remind Daphne of her brother. And when I talk she laughs, because we talk about the same things. She says the way I say things is occasionally impossible to follow. She has to wait for more information. And I understand that Lydia is right about me. That I sometimes make people uncomfortable because I'm not clear. I'm confident but obtuse. And they dont want to hurt my feelings. So they laugh good-naturedly. Usually it's a joke that I make where the leap is too large.

Daphne's hair is tied back in two pigtails, and this forces her face to be intense when she laughs. The laugh is something that is not serene beauty. There's a gruff undertone that means she's game for anything.

29 I meet Maisie Pye to discuss our novels. She's making a novel about what's happening now. It's thinly veiled autobiography. Except she's pushing it. The Oliver character has an affair, and her friends, when they read it, think Oliver's cheating on her. He's not, she says. People believe if you write from a tone of honesty, conviction, and sincerity, if you capture that correctly, then readers will be convinced it all happened that way.